I find Jane Eyre a rare example of a novel
using a ritual plot. Structurally, I see the text as containing two
entirely separate levels of narration which do not know about each
other, the primitive plot and the author’s work as a novelist. The
plot has come unbidden from somewhere else in the mind and has its
own agenda over which the author has no control; yet it may have
been triggered by the extent of the author’s personal involvement in
her subject. Her work as an author has the status of an overlay,
sharing story material with the plot to create a quite different
narrative. Since the author’s work cannot change the course of the
plot, texts of this kind usually show some conflict, but, in Jane
Eyre, the two levels of narration co-exist harmoniously, even
while raising questions.

The chief of the evidence for this textual
situation lies in the way in which the plot culminates in the Moor
House and Ferndean episodes. The heroine arrives at Moor House to a
famous coincidence: she has escaped from Mr Rochester and wandered
destitute in country new to her until she calls at a lone house
where it turns out that unknown cousins are living. These cousins,
St John Rivers and his two sisters, appear to be connected by name
(Reed/Rivers) and by family structure, with John Reed and his two
sisters. Peter Allan Dale¹ comments that ‘Moor House turns out to be
more home than either [Jane] or we had any right to expect’: ‘three
good cousins and their maternal housekeeper finally bring in the
wanderer whom three bad cousins and their mother began the book by
excluding’. Dale also asks why Jane does not tell Rochester about
the ‘mysterious summons’ at Moor House. Doreen Roberts² asks why so
few readers notice a ‘drastic and quite sudden shift in plotting’ in
the novel. At Thornfield ‘there begins a progressive plot movement
from realism to fantasy’: ‘The Ingrams belong to the Angrian world,
there is the coincidence of Uncle Eyre in Madeira happening to know
the Masons in Jamaica, and alerting them to the bigamous marriage;
the still more remarkable coincidence that Jane, wandering aimlessly
around England, should stumble first go on her unknown cousins; then
come the handy legacy, the still more convenient conflagration
(after umpteen abortive attempts by the culprit), and the final
telepathic communication that rescues Jane from St John Rivers at
the eleventh hour.’

When I came to work on Jane Eyre in the
late 1970’s, I came with my models of medieval ritual plots, and I
noticed that the events at Moor House had the appearance of a replay
of those at Thornfield, reversing the vision of marriage with
Rochester so that it was a vision of a loveless union with St John
in the cause of service and sacrifice. Such a relationship,
reminiscent of Horn’s ‘Goodmind’ move, was suggestive of a move
structure.

In time I also realised that the Moor House and
Ferndean moves were, once again, that pair of moves relating to each
other as steps to a solution. The St John situation was a surrogate
one, while the final return to Rochester was to the exact situation.
The plot is finally ruthless, as only a ritual plot can be: the
Rochester figure was no longer at Thornfield, but at Ferndean, his
house and marriage destroyed by fire and he himself violently
reduced in power. These last events in a ritual plot would finally
remove a fear of dominance and also a fear of incest. While Brontë’s
overlay can be concerned with a marriage of loving equals achieved
by mature means, her ritual plot accomplishes marriage by means of
the ritual removal of fear and guilt, and the ritual marriage
represents a sense of sovereignty, all desires achieved.

Ritual plots do not arise from a neurosis which
can be cured by therapy. These narratives occur in texts which have
been exceptionally popular over many centuries and must therefore
represent a normal situation. It can also be seen that they have
their own, effective solutions at their own irrational level, and
might play a useful role at that depth of the mind. Certainly, in
the text of Jane Eyre, the presence of a ritual plot would
account for much of its power.

Chart for the Ritual Plot in Jane Eyre

The Author’s Overlay

The Plot

1.

Jane’s
early childhood at Gateshead with her aunt and cousins

Jane is an
orphan and dependant, unjustly accused

and cruelly
treated. She refuses to co-operate with

this
situation. She asks questions and feels she is too
different in character from the Reeds. The

apothecary
suggests school.

Move 1

The
heroine’s low status in her family; John Reed and his
two sisters

The heroine
is unhappy: she feels oppressed and

desires
‘ascendancy’.

2.

Lowood
School

Detailed
account of the school where Jane grows up. Development
of the characters Miss Temple,

Helen Burns
and Mr Brocklehurst.

Move 2

School
under Miss Temple

A step
forward is taken towards her desires under

Miss
Temple. She compares well with her

Gateshead
cousins.

3.

Thornfield
with Mr Rochester

Jane is a
governess and servant at Thornfield.

Development
of the relationship between her and

Rochester.
Jane leaves Thornfield when she learns that Rochester is
married.

Move 3

The Master
of Thornfield

Marriage
with the master of Thornfield might

bestow
sovereignty on the heroine, but confusion of the master
with a parent at this level leads to a fear of incest.
The power of the master also threatens the heroine’s
sovereignty.

4.

St John
Rivers and his sisters at Moor House

Jane
wanders destitute until she arrives at the door of
unknown cousins. She lives with them and shares her
inheritance with them. This part of the novel

gives us
the unique character of St John Rivers.

Jane
considers and then turns down his offer of a loveless
union, and, praying to be shown the right

path, she
hears a call to choose her love for

Rochester.

Move 4

Penance,
followed by a Goodmind move in the surrogate situation
of St John Rivers

After a
penance in the wilderness, the heroine enters the first
of two moves to remove the ideas of incest and parental
dominance from her vision of sovereignty. The heroine
contends with a new master/father-figure, using the
reversal stratagem of contemplating a loveless marriage
in the cause of service and sacrifice. The prime aim
seems to be to purify the content of the previous move.

5.

Ferndean
with Rochester

Jane finds
Rochester a widower and disabled, his

house
destroyed by his wife. She can look after him,

and they
can live together in loving equality.

Move 5

Final Move
in the exact situation with Rochester

This second
of the two moves expunges the threats surrounding the
master of Thornfield. He is taken from his former,
haunted setting, both his house and

wife
eliminated by fire. He himself is reduced in power by
his injuries in the same fire. The heroine

is an equal
before him and, her fears now removed, the marriage can
take place. With this, the plot can end.

The plot I see has five moves and, typically, it
becomes more obtrusive in the later moves. This is because these
plots are engaged in bringing about a change in feeling, and greater
efforts are needed as the ritual sequence advances.

The overlay, meanwhile, has its own concerns:
characterisation, moral themes and other features relating to the
author’s reflection on the social world belong exclusively to this
level.

In the first two moves, the ritual plot is barely
perceptible (except for the link in name between John Reed and St
John Rivers). Its concern with a desire for status (it belongs to a
group of plots I call ‘sovereignty plots’) underlies the novel’s
exploration of a child’s yearning and struggle in the social world.

In Move 3, the plot’s concerns become a little
more obtrusive. Sovereignty plots use the idea of marriage with some
kind of royal figure, and, at the primitive level of such plots,
royal figures are confused with parents and siblings; this gives
rise to fear and guilt which the plot has to resolve before it can
end. In Jane Eyre, the king-figure’s house is haunted by a
hidden wife, an expression of the plot’s fear of incest. The plot
also has to deal with fear of the king-figure’s power, and the
‘Madwoman in the Attic’³ will express this fear too. To deal with
these problems, the plot enters another move.

In Moves 4 and 5, the plot becomes much more
obtrusive, as it seeks to purify the heroine’s desires and reduce
the king-figure’s power. In these two final moves, it uses the
familiar pair of moves using the surrogate and then the exact
situation as steps to a solution. There is an echo of Horn’s
Goodmind move at the surrogate court of King Thurston in the first
of the pair. The performance of a penance is quite common in ritual
plots, and, in Move 4, the heroine is an outcast in the wilderness
before making her famous arrival at Moor House. Purification is
also a function of many of these plots, and Move 4 purifies the
content of the Thornfield move by substituting for it the prospect
of a loveless marriage with a dominant relative in the cause of
service and sacrifice. Finally, the plot returns to the king-figure
of Move 3. Only the overlay, meanwhile, could give us the striking
character of St John Rivers.

The last move is the sovereignty move, where it
is the heroine’s time to ‘assume ascendancy’, but when she enters
this move it appears that her ascendancy can only be achieved by
removing almost everything from the king. The themes of the overlay
soften this ending by describing the love between the couple and
Jane’s care of Rochester, but the plot has quite other imperatives
and the alterations to the king-figure are strategic, dealing with a
necessity; it is typical that the powerful St John move has not been
able to solve all the problems. These primitive plots know nothing
of morality and are concerned only to create a sense of well-being
and remove sources of pain at a deep, unreasoning level of the mind.
At that depth, they are normal and healing, with their own, inbuilt
resolutions for desire and guilt, always ending in victory.